ne, nor in
Books chiefly, that we are made conscious of our strength as Men; Life
is the great Schoolmaster, Experience the mighty Volume. He who has made
one stern sacrifice of self has acquired more than he will ever glean
from the odds and ends of popular philosophy. And the man the least
scholastic may be more robust in the power that is knowledge, and
approach nearer to the Arch-Seraphim, than Bacon himself, if he cling
fast to two simple maxims--"Be honest in temptation, and in Adversity
believe in God." Such moral, attempted before in Eugene Aram, I have
enforced more directly here; and out of such convictions I have
created hero and heroine, placing them in their primitive and natural
characters, with aid more from life than books,--from courage the one,
from affection the other--amidst the feeble Hermaphrodites of our sickly
civilisation;--examples of resolute Manhood and tender Womanhood.

The opinions I have here put forth are not in fashion at this day. But I
have never consulted the popular any more than the sectarian, Prejudice.
Alone and unaided I have hewn out my way, from first to last, by the
force of my own convictions. The corn springs up in the field centuries
after the first sower is forgotten. Works may perish with the workman;
but, if truthful, their results are in the works of others, imitating,
borrowing, enlarging, and improving, in the everlasting Cycle of
Industry and Thought.

Knebworth, 1845. NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION, 1851.

I have nothing to add to the preceding pages, written six years ago, as
to the objects and aims of this work; except to say, and by no means
as a boast, that the work lays claims to one kind of interest which
I certainly never desired to effect for it--viz., in exemplifying the
glorious uncertainty of the Law. For, humbly aware of the blunders which
Novelists not belonging to the legal profession are apt to commit, when
they summon to the denouement of a plot the aid of a deity so mysterious
as Themis, I submitted to an eminent lawyer the whole case of "Beaufort
versus Beaufort," as it stands in this Novel. And the pages which refer
to that suit were not only written from the opinion annexed to the brief
I sent in, but submitted to the eye of my counsel, and revised by
his pen.--(N.B. He was feed.) Judge then my dismay when I heard long
afterwards that the late Mr. O'Connell disputed the soundness of the
law I had thus bought and paid for! "Who shall decide wh